April 15, 2026
Collaboration in Action
Building on the momentum of the Spring Conference, these focused workshops are designed to translate ideas into practical outcomes. Through collaborative, hands-on sessions, diverse Pistoia Alliance communities come together to address real-world challenges in the life sciences. Participants will explore topics ranging from digital transformation in pharma laboratories and the practical application of CMC process ontologies, to the future of FAIR data implementation and the ongoing adoption and governance of IDMP ontologies. Each workshop emphasizes shared learning, active participation, and tangible outputs, providing attendees with actionable insights and frameworks to support innovation, interoperability, and long-term impact across the ecosystem.
Accelerating Digital Transformation in Pharma Labs
Hosts: Anca Ciobanu & Farah Egby
This workshop aims at bringing together key participants from three influential Pistoia Alliance communities: Change Management, User Experience in Life Sciences, and Future Labs Evolution. Through guided discussions and targeted brainstorming, participants will examine current challenges, uncover user needs, and explore how pharma laboratories can successfully navigate digital transformation.
By the end of the workshop, participants will collectively produce:
- A map of key barriers and enablers influencing digital transformation in the lab across people, processes, and technology
- Clear recommendations for stakeholder engagement and change readiness, informed by change management and user experience insights
- A set of cross-functional design & implementation principles to guide future digital initiatives and ensure usability, adoption, and strategic alignment
From Recipes to Knowledge Graphs: A Hands-On Intro to the CMC Process Ontology
Host: Birthe Nielsen
This workshop aims to bring together Pistoia Alliance CMC enthusiasts — ontology practitioners, data leaders, and chemical engineers — to explore how the CMC Process Ontology can turn everyday, unstructured process descriptions into shareable, machine-readable knowledge. Using a real-world general recipe as our common sandbox, we’ll connect theory to practice and surface what’s needed to make CMC more robust to standardize CMC recipes.
By the end of the workshop, participants will:
- Be familiar with the CMC Process Ontology project (and links to ISA-88)
- Understand how the CMC PO represents recipe-relevant knowledge
- Explore pain points (e.g. informal language, cultural variants, uncertainty)
- Discuss extension needs (e.g. units, equipment, materials)
- Explore future opportunities: interoperability (e.g., with IDMP, IFO), validation profiles, and LLM-assisted annotation workflows
FAIR Forward
Host: Giovanni Nisato
The FAIR data principles were published in 2016. As we approach their 10-year anniversary, an important question arises: Where are we now, and what could FAIR implementation look like a decade from now?
This workshop brings together key participants from the Pistoia Alliance FAIR Community of Experts to reflect on lessons learned and to explore future pathways for systemic FAIR data adoption in the life sciences. Through a combination of pre-workshop self-assessments, guided discussions, and targeted brainstorming, participants will collaboratively map the key actors, constraints, and enabling assets within the life science ecosystem that influence FAIR implementation.
By the end of the workshop, participants will collectively deliver:
- A shared ecosystem map highlighting agents and influence domains
- A set of change vectors to accelerate FAIR adoption across the ecosystem
- A set of low-effort, short-time actions that can be initiated to enable and sustain progress
IDMP Ontology Community & Adoption
Host: Aditya Tyagi
This workshop brings together pharma companies, vendors, and the IDMP-O team to align on ongoing maintenance and adoption of IDMP–O. It will review key learnings from recent implementation sessions, including identified gaps, success factors, and critical topics, and use these insights to inform priorities for sustained maintenance. The workshop will also focus on proposing new maintenance deliverables, defining an IDMP-O community and user group structure, and identifying activities that drive broader global adoption and long-term support.
Workshop deliverables
- New IDMP‑O maintenance phase deliverables
- Propose priorities for ontology maintenance
- Collect feedback on current coverage and other identified gaps from implementations
- Engaging the IDMP‑O Community
- Discuss mission, scope, and principles of an IDMP‑O Community/User Group
- Map key stakeholder groups: pharma, regulators, industry consortia, vendors, implementation partners, academic groups
- Activities for increasing global adoption
- Identify priority use cases and sectors where IDMP‑O brings clear value, based on current implementation experience
- Discuss outreach and enablement activities: public documentation, implementation playbook, training/webinars, GitHub presence, and collaboration with regulators/standards bodies
- Review stakeholder categories with proposed engagement strategy and next contact points